This invention relates in general to an electronic encyclopedia and more particularly to improved techniques for presenting relevant information and relevant articles to the user.
It is known to provide large quantities of information on ROM chips for presentation to a user on a viewing screen where the user controls selection of material presented means of a data entry keyboard. There are known techniques for rapid scanning or searching of the data base against an entry word or term or set of words. By means of this scanning technique, a large number of separate entries or articles can be identified as having a term that matches the input or query term. These articles can be presented in sequence to the user so that the user can determine which of the articles is of greatest relevance to the user's inquiry or interest.
However, an encyclopedia has such an enormous data base that for many query terms, the number of articles identified are too numerous to permit the user to conveniently scan subject matter of greatest interest. What is required to make an electronic encyclopedia of optimum usefulness is to provide a technique under the user's control for determining the scope or depth of the search.
There is a great wealth of information relevant to any particular inquiry that a user might be making. That wealth of information is spread throughout an encyclopedia in many articles. What is needed is a way to organize a search through the material to provide a comprehensive yet efficient means for locating the information of greatest interest to the user.
Accordingly, a major purpose of this invention is to provide a technique for organizing the information available in an encyclopedia in response to a user input query in such a fashion that the user can efficiently focus on the information most likely to be of greatest pertinence to the user's reason for making the inquiry.